


Don't Come Cheap

by cytryne



Series: Second Chances [1]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alternate Universe, Character Study, Don't copy to another site, Ethical Dilemmas, Gen, Healing, I wanted to see the background parts to time travel, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Post-Dragon Age: Inquisition - Trespasser DLC, Time Travel, because it’s not an easy choice, do you know how awkward it is to tag something time travel adjacent, kind of, not sure yet - Freeform, possibly tbc, so i wrote it myself, tbe veil falls
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-01
Updated: 2019-08-02
Packaged: 2020-07-28 11:41:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20063440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cytryne/pseuds/cytryne
Summary: She'd tried the whole 'love will stop this' thing. All it did was break her heart and end the world with nothing left to show of it. But that didn't mean she would just lie down and accept this. She might be alone, but she could fix it. She would make a way..Kind-of a time travel AU.





	1. Chapter 1

She wasn’t the best mage by any means. What would have taken Dorian a few years took her nearly two decades to figure out and plan, but she was all she had now. Not everyone had died, but her choices in trying to persuade Solas to stop rather than simply opposing him with the full force of the Inquisition had ensured that. So she made due.

Other factors complicated her efforts, of course. The Veil was down. Peace was hard to come by at the best of moments, and she couldn’t just ignore all the people screaming out for help. They were her responsibility just as much as if she had pulled he Veil down herself. She was the Inquisitor, and her Inquisition had stood for the people. It may no longer exist, but she still had to help in any way she could. If that meant struggling alongside them as yet another refuge and putting off any attempts to fix it until they were safer, so be it. 

Ellana Lavellan was not like Solas. She would not stand by watching people suffer in disgust out of love for a dead world. No matter how many months it took away from her studies. 

But, with time came time for herself. The Evanuris were eventually defeated once and for all by Solas, and that meant less war. Less destruction. She stayed away from the resistance because she knew she would not be welcome, but there was only so much they were willing to do. Without the Evanuris threat, most effort went into rebuilding. Into providing homes. She had to run, once. Her efforts at preserving the refugees had been noticed, and they wanted to talk to her. Talk to the woman with one arm who had been helping people. It was pretty obvious who she was, when put like that. And she didn’t want to face any of them. There were too many emotions, and it would put her plans at risk. She had to remain forgotten to have the space to even begin to try to reverse this. 

So she vanished. Disappeared into yet another group of world-weary people, kept her head down, and hid. They stopped looking eventually. 

Time travel was an incredibly complex topic. It had to be, for only two people to ever successfully manage it. And that was with the Veil still in existence. Still, she tried. She had the pieces of the original amulet. They could provide a vague guide. It helped that as Arlathan rebuilt, their libraries opened to the rest of the world. She could go in and read about magical theory, as simply another unimportant quickling. It didn’t matter that she had been Inquisitor so long as no one she knew spotted her. The ancient elves viewed them all the same. How quick they were, to judge within their own People. How satisfying it was, to know their prejudice was what let them give her the information for their downfall. 

She missed having support. She missed having friends who trusted her, advisors who respected her, and structure to ensure everything was carried out properly. But she had lost it all because of her own damned actions. Because she had thought something as frivolous as caring was enough to change a mind and save a world. Because she was a fool. A tool. She’d had trust placed in her and she’d broken it and then spit on the remains.

So she‘d do it alone.

She didn’t want accolades, not anymore. The Inquisitor who had seemed so far away now, locked behind bars of misery and betrayal and death. Now all she had was anger, and a burning need to fix this. 

Trudging through books in a language she could barely read taught her patience. She relearned how to handle failure every time the amulet broke because she’d messed something she didn’t understand up again. Hiding in plain sight forced her to be humble. She’d been a good person, once, but so naive. Now she was only what she’d rebuilt by force every day. Only having one arm sucked. It made everything harder, made people was willing to accept her help, and made her so much more noticeable. But it was as much of who she was now as the Anchor had been to being the Inquisitor. Ellana, daughter of a Dalish clan long dead, the one-armed helper wrapped up in mystery and determination.

She would’ve preferred to never notice them, but there were good parts of this world. The people she had helped once were now in charge of their own lives and their own families. They didn’t struggle. Mages weren’t terrified of demons and Templars anymore. 

But she cling to the bad. The lack of dwarves, of Qunari, of humans, of everyone who hadn’t managed to survive the world changing. The mass graves from Evanuris attacks. The areas that were yet abandoned. These were the things that kept her going in her worst days. The memory of her friends dying as the Veil fell. The absences. They stuck out to her like nothing else could.

If she fixed this, there would be all peoples again, not just the People. All species, all races, all cultures. Everything.

But there would also be such rampant hatred. The oppression of all elves. The Circles. Terror. And that was assuming she managed to fix it and not make it worse. She could easily just end up provoking Fen’Harel into killing her immediately. Or start a war that destroyed everyone in its wake. Or fail to stop Corypheus. Or die, and have this happen again anyway.

No. She couldn’t think like that. 

She had to remember what she was working for. Why this was important. Why every species deserved to live no matter how they interacted with each other. Not just the bad.

Eventually, she could account for most of the factors of time travel. Not well, but enough. It shouldn’t break the world, if nothing else. It could kill her. It could rip a hole in the Veil once she got back far enough to challenge the Breach. But it shouldn’t destabilize the fabric of the world itself, and that was enough for her. It could work.

She reached for the fixed amulet, and hesitated.

Would she really be any better than Solas, if she sacrificed the progress made in this world to try to save the past? Was it worth it? Was it even up to her to choose?


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She decides what to do.

When the Veil fell, the world was destroyed.

No, that wasn’t quite right. When the Veil fell, only one race was truly affected beyond belief: the dwarves. Without the Titans, they could not handle the force of the Fade. Most died soon, but many lingered. Varric was one of them. But day by day, he got sicker. Until there was nothing left.

The true horror came after.

Spirits, thrown into the world again without preparation. People, reacting to the spirits with terror. Nowhere escaped it. They saw monsters in their lives and found themselves helpless against them. The ancient elves were there, but they helped the People first and foremost and ignored the rest. That was what took out the Qunari and most of the humans. The spirits were as much of victims as the rest of them. 

Then came the Evanuris. They were angry, you see, at the one who had trapped them. So angry. She could understand their position with her own emotions towards him, but they were monsters. They left a trail of death and destruction behind them in their quest to eliminate Fen’Harel’s existence. His soldiers were not much better. They took little care as to who they may be hurting as a consequence of their battles, and few escaped unscathed. She was lucky. She’d given up on saving Fen’Harel early enough on to not meet them in person. But she saw it all. 

The details of those days were seared in her memory, never to leave. She couldn’t forget them if she tried, and oh she had tried. But they haunted her behind her eyelids no matter what she did, accompanied by a whisper of your fault.

So why couldn’t she just take the amulet? It was right there. All she had to do was reach out and lift it up, and then cast the spell she’d created. She should. It could save entire races. At the very least, she could prepare them so when this did happen again more could survive. Better preparation could save thousands. 

But she’d helped the survivors grow. They were so much more than they had been. Even if she could guarantee if nothing else they would end up here again, these versions of these people would never reach this point again. It wouldn’t be the same level of achievement and survival and regrowth. It would be throwing them away for an uncertain ability to fix the past.

But the species that were gone from the world couldn’t be saved by moving on.

Her mistakes couldn’t be fixed by moving on.

The amulet shone in the flickering light cast by her candles, taunting her, and she stood suddenly. Her chair banged against the wall as she walked away. There was time. She had nothing but time. She could do it tomorrow, when she was ready. Another day of going over her plans and failsafes wouldn’t hurt.

.

It stayed on the table. She came back to it the next day, and the next, but couldn’t bring herself to pick it up. It shouldn’t have been hard, but it was. It was terrifying. She’d taken on a lot of responsibility before, but to choose if she should erase a world in order to save another? How could anyone be expected to have that burden?

So she planned instead. She came up with every possible situation if she went, and responses to each. It didn’t help. She still just didn’t know. 

She went on walks. She saw the world. There was so much and so little to it now, at the same time. It used to be so much larger, with so many people and cultures and everything. But the desolation of the wars was slowly disappearing. The survivors were living. Against all odds, they’d started thriving again. It was glorious and depressing all in one. 

She took to carrying the amulet around in her pocket, but didn’t cast the spell just yet. One more day, she told herself, one more day of meeting people and seeing the world. To remind herself of why she had to do this. 

During the days she took to traveling with groups of people, pilgrims looking for a new home or to reclaim an old in the ruins of her civilization. They mourned with her. Some spat on the ground when they came across the husks of yet another human town or mansion, or when they saw chantries in disrepair, but most seemed sad. They talked about what it used to be like, the people they used to know, the things they’d lost. 

But at night, there were songs and stories. Hope for their future homes, and memories that were less bitter than before and more about honoring the good parts of the lost. The hatred over how they had been treated never left, but they talked about the good humans. And they looked toward the future without fear.

They were at peace.

If she traveled, what would happen to this? She’d never seen elves so content in her life. Would it be gone from existence, like Redcliffe? Or, she wondered with a chill, fingers tangling with the chain of the amulet in her pocket, was that world even truly gone? They’d assumed it was, but that was merely an assumption born from their inability to go back. What if it had continued? A separate stream of time, where they’d disappeared and reappeared only to leave with destruction in their wake again?

No.

That line of thought bore nothing good. Future Redcliffe had been destroyed. Leliana’s face after all that torture came to mind, and she shuddered. It hadn’t been real. No matter how much the thought of how real it must have seemed to them lingered. 

She thought about using the amulet constantly, but there was always someone else who needed her help right that moment, and she couldn’t just ignore them. Couldn’t ignore the lost child far from home or the ill family who needed help putting up shelter and gathering crops or the young mage who didn’t know how to handle their magic or the spirits who had so many questions about the world and couldn’t find someone else willing to answer. They reminded her of her lost friends. They were people she could actually help.

She started to draw attention again, not for protecting but for being willing to help in any way needed. People tried to take advantage of it at times. They failed miserably. If she were still the Inquisitor she might have reacted harshly and punished them, but she’d seen too much despair for that. Instead, they got help. A job with good people, or someone able to work for them in exchange for food, or even just the knowledge of how to provide for themselves. She could do it. They needed it. This way they could help themselves in the future, and she could leave with no guilt.

Except the knowledge that she might be erasing their growth.

For years, she did this. Her mortality had been erased when the Veil was erased, so she had the time. The past could wait. It would still be there once they were in a better place.

They came to her in a seedy tavern. There was recognition in their eyes, she could tell, but it did not change how they approached her. Three of them. Ancient elves, from their bearing and demeanor towards the rest, but not ones she had met before. She would’ve stabbed them before they spoke and run if not for the price it would have cost the owner of the place. 

“We come with an offer for you, Lavellan,” the middle one said, and she eased back against the wall, arm over her chest in an instinctive gesture she still hadn’t erased. People looked over at the name. She knew them all intimately, but none knew her. They hadn’t known until then that she was Dalish, and it started whispers. The Dalish had been wiped out or integrated into the Dread Wolf’s forces in the early days of the fight against the Evanuris, thanks to the vallaslin, and it was well known only one Lavellan had ever agreed to be bare-faced. She’d have to move on fast after this.

Ellana tilted her head back to meet their eyes, her mask of humility fading away as she pulled on her past self. No matter what they said, she would not be embarrassed or ashamed or scared. 

“Speak your piece, then.”

And they did. Her face remained stoic throughout, no matter how she felt. 

She left immediately afterwards, tossing the speechless owner far more money than he was owed for what she’d drank. Whispers followed.

.

What they had offered was simple: she kept doing what she had been doing. It required nothing from her that she was not willing to give, and they were quite happy to allow her to continue as she was without any contact with anyone important. Fen’Harel had not been consulted in this. He would remain unaware as long as they could help it. But she would have support. Anything she wanted or needed in the course of helping the ones who fell through the cracks of their new system, if they could offer it they would give it. 

She’d agreed. 

It burned at her to agree to work with the people who had helped tear down her world and salt the ashes, but what else could she do? She wanted to help the common person. This way, when she left, there would be more of a system in place to continue her work. They could follow in the example she set up without her having to do anything to force it. It would just take time.

The loss of her invisibility cut worse than anything else.

She didn’t want people to know the she had survived. The Inquisitor was dead. The Inquisitor would remain dead. But now, people recognized her again. Not always, but often enough. The rumor of her presence spread faster than she could outrun. If she came to a farming community with the offer of lending a hand with the crops and teaching them other skills related to survival for nothing more than a roof over her head and some food, she was met with people who could guess who she was. Most didn’t say anything—too grateful for the help—but she knew they knew. It was in their eyes, in their constant distance when before they’d treated her as merely another traveler, in their insistence that she had the best they could offer when all she wanted was the worst. In return, she hid money in their stores. She added to what they could make or grow themselves with supplies she’d taken from the people in charge of bigger cities who could spare it. Most of the time they even offered it. 

But no one wouldn’t let her be just another elf.

In cities she could disappear for a time, as another migrant worker in the plainest of clothes who looked for lodging that was as cheap as possible, but her arm always marked her as different. It made it too easy to connect her to her past. She’d use back entrances to gain access to whatever she needed at that moment to do her work, but someone always noticed eventually. The good days it was a servant. They’d be surprised and shocked, but once they registered who she was she got a conspiratorial grin and permission to do whatever she needed without anyone important knowing. They’d find out eventually that something had been requisitioned, but by then she’d be long gone.

The bad days it was one of the people who owned the place she was getting things from. Their anger would quickly go to an uncomfortable form of respect, before inviting her to dine with them or something else she couldn’t reasonably refuse while taking from them. And then there would be renewed rumors. 

Without a spymaster to manage them, the rumors were extremely inconvenient. Someone with power had to be doing something about them to keep Fen’Harel from looking for her, but they did nothing about the worst of them. She didn’t want to be painted as a figure of legend. She didn’t want people to respect her. She just wanted to fix things, get them to a place where she could leave.

Most days she forgot about that, now.

The amulet stayed in her pocket but she rarely paid more attention to it than one would a patch on their clothes. She hadn’t gotten close to using it in years. There was always something else more important than the past happening.

She’d do it once the world was properly set up again. It would be cruel to leave when there were still people she could help. It had always been her calling, no matter how naive she was. 

Time passed.

Against her will, she struck up conversation with a librarian in one of the libraries she frequented as often as possible around her work. They started expecting her to appear, and to tell them about the world away from their corner of the universe. And, unwittingly, she enjoyed it. She hadn’t even been casual acquaintances with someone in decades, but she couldn’t bring herself to stop. They actually treated her as a person, and not . . . uncomfortably close to how she’d known people to act to a legend. Was this how Solas had felt, meeting her all those years ago? 

When they invited her to a party, she took it. It was selfish and and for her goals but she . . . she was tired of being alone.

It went so well that she wished it hadn’t.

It had been fine, the idea of walking away and erasing this to start over back when she hadn’t known anyone as anything more than a remnant of what was actually important and needed saving. When the culture had just been tatters of what came before. When struggle outweighed happiness for everyone. When the memory of everyone dying was so bright in her mind she could not escape it.

But now, it hurt to think of going back. She didn’t want to. She didn’t want to face doing it all again. She didn’t want to have to have the possibility of failing. She didn’t want to think about what could happen to this current state. They’d rebuilt so far. She was helping. 

Would it be fair, to give up on trying to save the other races in exchange for this peace?

She didn’t know.

She never knew.

Why had she ended up with the burden of making this choice? Why had she ever decided to try to make a way to travel back and fix it? It would be so much easier if she’d just moved on. If she could say ‘I wish’ but have no way to do it.

If only she could talk to Solas about why he had torn down the Veil, but she wasn’t ready for that. She didn’t know if she’d ever be ready to see him again. At least he had respected that. 

The amulet haunted her thoughts every day now. It was nearly a hundred years since she’d made it, but it looked exactly the same. She didn’t know why. She wasn’t a good enough mage to have done that on purpose. Maybe the fact it was related to time, and so timeless?

She had to make a choice. 

And so, as always, she traveled to think about it. To decide. She went to the only place she could think of, when she thought important parts of her past. The beginning.

Nature had long since reclaimed Haven. But it was enough. She knew what to do now.

Ellana Lavellan placed the amulet down in the dirt, and stepped away. She scooped up a pile of dirt on her shovel, and tossed it one by one back into the hole until it was level with the ground once again.

She’d never be able to forget what she’d lost but . . . she wasn’t a god. She wasn’t all powerful, or so convinced in her own righteousness to be able to make a choice like this when she didn’t know everything that could or would happen as a result. She’d made bad choices before when she thought they would be fine. There was no guarantee that wouldn’t be one if she did it. This world had happened, and it wasn’t too bad. It could be improved. But not if she gave up on it because she’d lost in the past. 

It would remain, buried there, for ages. Until a curious hunter came across it, and brought it back into the world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’d meant to go with her traveling back in time, honestly. I have a plot, with what I feel is reasonably realistic consequences for someone who isn’t good with magical theory mucking about in time, and no small amount of it written. I’m going to finish it someday. There are a lot of very interesting possibilities for how I’d want to take it. Time travel is one of those things that you just can’t simplify into a short premise—cough cough MCU—and brings up so many lovely moral questions. No promises on when, or how, and it’s more likely to be a series of connected chronological drabbles than anything else because my brain doesn’t work well in more standard fic formats, but I’ll make the series and add to it when it happens.
> 
> But it just felt disingenuous to do here. This is a Lavellan who’s fucked up enough in the past for everyone left to leave her. She doesn’t have as much trust in her decisions anymore, when all’s said and done. If she had finished the amulet sooner, when anger and sadness were still her main emotions towards the world, she definitely would have done it. If she’d still had other people with her who had known her for years and trusted her decisions, she would have. But for where she is in this, it just didn’t feel right.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first work in this fandom so yeah, any feedback would be very much appreciated.  
I have ideas for continuing it, but the problem is that I have ideas for both if she did or didn't use the amulet and aren't really sure which I like better. I like them both.


End file.
